Getting started

Start Neru, grant its permissions, and bind your first hotkey. Install Neru first, see Installation.

Start the daemon

Neru is a background daemon plus the neru command. Skip this step if you installed the login service.

• macOS: open Neru.app, or run neru launch.
• Windows: open Neru from the Start Menu, or run neru launch.
• Linux: run neru launch.

Check it with neru status.

Grant permissions

Run neru doctor. It lists each permission and backend with its state.

macOS

• Accessibility is required. Neru asks for it at launch. Grant it in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility.
• Screen Recording is needed only for the vision and contour hint strategies. Neru asks the first time one runs, and macOS applies the grant after Neru restarts.

If a grant does not take after an upgrade, see Troubleshooting.

Linux

X11 needs only the runtime libraries. Wayland also needs the input group and a udev rule, so follow Linux setup before going on.

Windows

No grants are needed. Apps running as administrator are a known limit.

Write a config file

neru config init

Neru runs on built-in defaults without a file, but a file is where every change goes. On first launch, macOS and Windows offer to write it for you. Configuring Neru covers where it lives and how to apply edits.

Bind your first hotkey

macOS and Windows ship a launcher for every mode, so you can skip this step. Hints is Primary+Shift+Space, where Primary is Cmd on macOS and Ctrl on Windows. The default hotkeys list the rest.

Note

Linux ships no global hotkeys, so none collide with terminal shortcuts such as Ctrl+Shift+C. Bind your own before you can use Neru.

On Linux, add a [hotkeys] table to your config:

[hotkeys]
"Ctrl+Alt+Space" = "hints"
"Ctrl+Alt+C" = "recursive_grid"
"Ctrl+Alt+S" = "scroll"

Then run neru config reload. Each value is the command you would type after neru in a shell. On Wayland this table needs the input group from Linux setup. Without it, bind neru hints and the rest in your compositor, see Global hotkeys on Wayland.

How a [hotkeys] table combines with the defaults is in Merging behavior.

Try it

Press the hints hotkey. Labels appear on every clickable element. Type one and the cursor moves there. Press Shift+L to click, or Escape to leave.

Next, take the ten-minute tour in Using Neru.